A word about charities. 'Tis the season for giving, but unfortunately not all charities are created equal. So I consult Charity Navigator to help figure out where my money will make a difference. The statistics I look at are Program Expenses (the percent of funds going directly to the program) and Compensation of Leaders (how much do they pay the CEO). For example, a charity we love is the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. The Charity Navigator profile shows that 88% goes to program expenses, and the President only makes $172,546 a year.

(Compare to, say, the Firefighters Charitable Foundation who use 7% of funds for program expenses, 87.7% for fundraising (!!!), and pay their $98,000 a year or 1.28%--that's nearly 1/5 of the funds going to programming. Deplorable!)